Silk Road treasures of the Humboldt Forum

 

1. Uighur princes and princesses. Wall paintings from Cave temple 9, Bezeklik, Xinjiang, est. 8^th-9^th C.

The Humboldt Forum is the newest of Berlin’s elite group of museums, all clustered on an island in the River Spree. These include the Pergamon (with the Ishtar Gate) and the Neues Museum (home of Nerfertiti), so the Humboldt has some tough competition. But none of the others can boast of two Buddhist cave temples, carried from the Taklamakan desert and re-assembled on-site. It was to see these, and the rest of the Humboldt’s world-famous Silk Road collection, that I visited Berlin in May. 

The Humboldt is the successor to two previously separate museums: the Museum for Asian Art and the Ethnological Museum which stood in a quiet suburb of Berlin. In the early 2000s, plans were launched to unite these collections with the other treasures on Museum Island. To house them, a replica imperial palace was built from scratch amidst much controversy and huge expense. The Humboldt Forum finally opened in 2021. Look at the size of it!

2. View of Humboldt Forum from the west. Source: © Asio otus / Wikimedia Commons

Utilising the 42,000 sq m of space has not been a problem. The collection holds over 500,000 objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas: only some 20,000 are on display but they fill up the exhibition floors easily. Elsewhere, the bright modern interior is designed to accommodate workshops, seminar rooms and vast hordes of visitors. Curators from small cash-strapped museums (i.e. the vast majority) will be prostrate with envy.

What’s on display is beautifully presented, particularly in the galleries containing artefacts from Silk Road sites in Xinjiang, China. These were found and brought home by four German archaeological expeditions between 1902 and 1914, known as the Turfan Expeditions. The most “fruitful” forays were those involving Albert von le Coq, whose name like those of Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot is synonymous with Silk Road exploration. Their stories are told in Peter Hopkirk’s book Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, which I can’t recommend enough.

Von le Coq was only an ambitious museum volunteer when he was allowed to lead the 1904 expedition, after the boss Albert Grünwedel fell ill. He grabbed his chance and found an amazing set of deserted Buddhist cave temples at Bezeklik, near Turfan. On hearing this, Grünwedel hauled himself over to Central Asia to rejoin the team, launching the third expedition. But being a quiet scholarly type and still unwell, he was often overridden by von le Coq, which had unfortunate consequences for some of their discoveries.

Soon after Grünwedel’s arrival, the team (on a local tip-off) uncovered the great cave temple complex at Kizil.  

3. Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, China

Ancient Buddhist cave temples are found across India, Central Asia and China. The ones at Ajanta, western India, date as far back as the 2nd century BCE. In structure, they range from tiny monastic cells to multi-room spaces with hallways, niches and shrines, decorated with sculptures and paintings of religious scenes.  

Kizil comprises more than 200 cave temples dating from the 4th to 7th century CE, dotted along a cliff-face in the northern Taklamakan. The largest are up to 20m deep and 15m in height. A Japanese team tried to explore them in 1902 but were hit by earthquakes. For the happy Germans (who came back again in 1913-14) it yielded a rich store of artefacts including the so-called Cave of the Ring-bearing Doves (image 4 below), a 6th C cave which the team named after the bird motif on its walls (image 5). In the world of Silk Road scholarship, its more mundane name is Cave 123. This is one of the two cave temples reconstructed at the Humboldt.

   4. Reconstruction of Cave 123. The central niche held a statue of the Buddha, which was gone before the Germans arrived. The two side doorways to the rear cell allowed devotees to walk round the statue (circumambulate) while praying. Source: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst

             5. Ring-bearing dove motif, Cave 123, Kizil. Source: DW.com (left, remaining section in Kizil). Sketch by Grünwedel (right), from his book Ancient Buddhist Places of Worship in Chinese Turkestan (1912).

The bird motif is quite hard to see, especially in the Humboldt’s soft light. What catches the eye immediately is the cave’s domed ceiling, divided into eight segments depicting the Buddha with bodhisattvas. On each of the side walls is a large image of the Buddha surrounded by his disciples. Many of the colours are still vivid, derived from elements such as lapis lazuli (blue), copper (green) and gypsum (white). The cave has been rebuilt according to precise measurements from Kizil itself, so you can walk through the narrow door as worshippers did 1500 years ago and marvel at the densely decorated space, only 3m wide. 

The domed ceiling is unusual for the time and place (barrel-vaulted ceilings were more common), suggesting a Middle Eastern influence from the nearby trading hub of Kucha. The Silk Road was an international trade route, so these caves were not as isolated then as they seem now. 

6. Domed ceiling of Kizil Cave 123. Coloured segments are originals; brown patches are filled in

7. Moving the two-tonne dome of Cave 123 to the Humboldt in 2018. For full story see this link.
Source:  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The reconstructed cave sits in the middle of a large hall whose walls are hung with other painted stone slabs brought back by the expeditions. Von le Coq called them frescoes but technically they are murals, painted on dry (not wet) surfaces. Some of these are over 2x2 metres, comprising several pieces fitted back together. Von le Coq and his assistant Theodor Bartus (the muscles of the team) were proud of their prowess at cutting out these slabs and packing them for transport; the method is carefully described in von le Coq’s memoirs. Grünwedel would have preferred to copy the images and leave them in place but was often over-ruled. 

Von le Coq and Bartus had had plenty of practice cutting up cave temples on their earlier foray at Bezeklik. Their haul from there included images of Uighur princes and princesses (image 1) whose colours were perfectly preserved under centuries-old layers of dry sand. What isn’t on display, though, is a set of fifteen huge Buddhist wall-paintings (each about 3x2 metres) from the same cave, which von le Coq also dispatched to Berlin. Because of their size and weight, the paintings could not be moved to safety in WWII, and all were destroyed when the old museum was bombed.

 

They were however reproduced in von le Coq’s book Chotscho (1913), which I consulted in the British Library. The book itself is like a concrete slab but it was well worth seeing its breathtaking images like the one below. The lines where the segments were stuck back together are visible. Chotscho was the German spelling of Khocho, now Gaochang, the nearest town to Bezeklik.

                8. Buddha in a pranidhi scene from Cave temple 9, Bezeklik, Xinjiang, 8-9^th C. Original dimensions 3.25m x 2m.                    Pranidhi scenes, popular in Uighur Buddhism, depict past buddhas foreseeing the enlightenment of the present Buddha Sakyamuni. Source: Chotscho (1913), von le Coq

Back in the Humboldt, the adjoining gallery houses the second of its two caves: the Cave of the Sixteen Swordbearers (Cave 8), also from Kizil, dated 5th– 6th C. In this room the curators have tried to suggest the cliffs and sand dunes of the Taklamakan by building tall sloping blocks with doorways and narrow passages. The huge space is very dark, emphasising the dim light from the doorways.  Affixed along the passage walls are four paintings, each depicting four ornately dressed sword-bearing men who were probably the sponsors of the temple. These were found on the passage walls leading into the cave’s main chamber. 

9. One of four segments from the Cave of the Sixteen Swordbearers (Cave 8), Kizil, 5^th-6^th C. Approx 1.2m wide.

The men’s appearance has provoked much discussion due to their reddish-brown hair, light-coloured eyes, and Persian-style clothes with Sassanian motifs (see third figure from left). Men with similar features are seen in other paintings here, such as the monks in the Cave of the Painters (Cave 207, image 10). They are commonly described as Tocharians, which some scholars find unsatisfactory because it derives from an early analysis of their language which mistakenly linked them to the Tokharoi people of Afghanistan. Some scholars claim that they are Sogdians or Hephthalites. But there has been no conclusive identification so the term “Tocharian” is still used.

                     10. Buddha with bodhisattvas and monks, Cave of the Painters (Cave 207), est. 6^th C. The monks in the lower left have reddish hair and pale round faces.

The two Kizil cave temples are the jewels in the Humboldt’s Asian collection. But like other major museums in the Western hemisphere, the Humboldt is being challenged as to why it still possesses these treasures. Their provenance is obviously suspect: the argument that archaeologists “rescued” them is only partly true. Some were decaying or looted, but others were in good condition and could have been copied and preserved on-site as recommended by Grünwedel. When you stand in the Cave of the Ring-bearing Doves, you wonder how von le Coq had the audacity to cut it up and send it 6000km overland to Germany. The fifteen great paintings from Bezeklik might have survived if they had not gone to Berlin: they were doing very well before von le Coq and Bartus turned up. 

Equally, it is certain that many caves had been looted or destroyed by locals even before the Germans arrived; the British and French teams reported the same. Aurel Stein, working in the southern Taklamakan, re-buried a set of stucco Buddhist statues which were too large to move, hoping to study them later. But before his return, the statues were found and destroyed by tomb-robbers looking for treasure. Elsewhere, poor farmers used the coloured pigments from cave murals as plant fertiliser. Xinjiang was China’s wild west then: the Qing dynasty was dying and the average citizen of this remote corner was just trying to survive. It was not until the 1930s that the Chinese government officially banned exploration by foreign teams.

A more constructive question is whether the Humboldt should repatriate these treasures, as it is doing with its Benin bronzes from Africa. China’s vast modern museums could house them easily; in fact the Kizil and Bezeklik caves are now well-developed tourist sites. But this raises the question of whether the artefacts should go to Beijing/Shanghai or more correctly to Xinjiang, just as the Benin bronzes have gone home to the kingdom of Benin within Nigeria, and not to Lagos. Perhaps the Humboldt would rather not wade into the hot mess of Beijing-Xinjiang relations.

My trip to Berlin ended in another hot mess (British Airways flight cancellations) but I’m delighted that I made the trip. Apart from anything else, entry to the Humboldt is completely free, thanks to Neil MacGregor, the ex-British Museum boss who headed the project from 2015 to 2018. Berliners who were horrified by the project’s €680mn price-tag may not be happy but I am likely to visit again, just not flying BA.

Bibliography

Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan (1928), Albert von le Coq

Chotscho (1913), Albert von le Coq

Altbuddhistische Kultstätten in Chinesisch-Turkistan (Ancient Buddhist Places of Worship in Chinese Turkestan) (1912), Albert Grünwedel

Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (1980), Peter Hopkirk

“A Place of Safekeeping? The Vicissitudes of the Bezeklik Murals”, Susan Whitfield, from Conservation of Ancient Sites on the Silk Road (2010), Getty Centre

Ancient deities on the Silk Road

Source: National Museum of Korea

This splendid object is a funerary banner, made of hemp-cloth and measuring about 1.9m. It was found in a 7th century tomb in Astana, a huge ancient gravesite in what is now Xinjiang Province, China. The figures with human torsos and elegantly entwined tails are the goddess Nuwa (on the left) and the god Fu Xi who is variously described as her brother, her husband, or both. They were worshipped as far back as the Warring States period (5th to 3rd century BC) and probably much earlier. I love their flamboyant posture, looking as if they are engaged in a happy dance.

Although the Astana gravesite now lies within China, the whole region was once a kind of no-man’s-land, surrounded by deserts (as it still is today) and dotted with small independent city-states that functioned as trading points along the Silk Road. The nearest settlement to Astana was Gaochang but the largest nearby town was Turpan (or Turfan), 35km west, still a thriving centre today.

Nuwa and Fu Xi boast an impressive portfolio of responsibilities and achievements; they are the kind of gods that you want on your side. Nuwa repaired a hole in the universe and saved the world from a catastrophic flood, after which she restored the human race, either by creating people out of mud (in one version) or by coupling with Fu Xi (in a version derived from regional folktales). Fu Xi was the “first of the great sage-kings and the initiator of man’s emergence from his undifferentiated animal state”.  He taught humans to fish and hunt, and is credited with inventing the hexagrams of the I Ching: the symbolic sets of lines used in Chinese religious rituals.

In tombs of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), the pair were often depicted on walls, carvings and banners. Their role was to maintain the order of the cosmos, ensuring a peaceful universe for the deceased in the afterlife. This is reflected in the instruments they hold: a mathematical compass for Nuwa (whose domain is the heavens, which are circular in Chinese mythology), and a set-square for Fu Xi (whose domain is the earth, which is square or angular). It’s been suggested that their presence was meant to give reassurance to the deceased so that he or she would not try to return to the living world. This might explain why the pair look calm and cheerful, unlike the scary tomb guardians of later periods.

Annoyingly, there seems to be no explanation for their serpent tails. The legends simply describe Nuwa as having a human torso and a dragon or serpent’s tail (a surprisingly common feature amongst female deities across several cultures). In the Han period, it became common to portray Nuwa and Fu Xi as a pair with entwined tails, like the Greek caduceus. But no-one seems to know why. 

Amongst its many mysteries, there are two things about this banner that I find particularly interesting. Firstly, it was one of several found in the Astana graves, all from around the same period (examples below). Fu Xi and Nuwa were most commonly found in Han Dynasty burials, so what were they doing in Central Asian tombs 400 years later?  

Sources: National Museum of India (L), British Museum (R)

The likely answer is that they were a reflection of cultural diaspora, where emigrants maintain long-standing traditions from their home country. Gaochang, the nearest town to Astana, had a large ethnic Chinese population. Turpan had a history of diplomatic relations with China, dating back to the Han Dynasty. A consequence of Silk Road trade was that many Chinese businessmen settled in these towns, and in doing so they kept up old traditions like burial practices that dated back for centuries. The same type of cultural memory exists in migrant Chinese communities in South-East Asia today.

The banner also offers an interesting link to Japan’s involvement in Silk Road archaeology. While European names like Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot are famous as Silk Road explorers (or plunderers, depending on your viewpoint), there were also three Japanese expeditions in the early 1900s, on one of which this banner was discovered. The expeditions were sponsored by Count Otani Kuzui, leader of a major Japanese Buddhist sect. Ostensibly, the expeditions sprang from a genuine interest in religious relics, but the truth was that national pride was also at stake. As a budding regional power, Japan did not want to be outdone by Britain, France, Russia and Germany who were (literally) carving up the Silk Road. The Japanese teams were even accused of spying, an allegation that lingered for decades: you can read about it in Peter Hopkirk’s brilliant book Foreign Devils on the Silk Road. 

Worship of Nuwa became less common over time, but temples still exist in her honour, and in Hebei Province she and Fu Xi are commemorated in an annual festival that involves eating lots of noodles (perhaps because noodles look like serpents? See below.). For a goddess who mastered mathematics and flood control, repaired the universe, created mankind and survived the Cultural Revolution, none of this should be surprising.  

Source: BBC